Russians have been so obsessed with Ukraine for five years to the point of forgetting about their own country’s problems, Lilia Shevtsova says; and Moscow has done what it can to keep Russia at the center of Ukraine’s reality. But as the election of Volodymyr Zelenskyy shows Ukraine has gotten over Russia. The question is: can Russia get over Ukraine?
Russia’s obsession with Ukraine over the last five years says an awful lot about Russia, the political analyst says. It shows that Russia has no idea about how to consolidate itself, and it shows that hostility to Ukraine has become “an instrument for the legitimization of the authorities.”
Moreover, she continues, the excessive focus on Ukraine to the exclusion of Russian realities highlights the cowardice of the Russian elites who would like to attack America but won’t because they fear the consequences and thus attack Ukraine. And it shows that the positions Russians take on Ukraine “has become a criterion of loyalty to the Russian elite.”
The fixation Russians have about Ukraine “cries out about our complexes and inabilities” to cope with the current situation in and around Russia, Shevtsova says.
As a result, “Russia has turned out to be unprepared for Ukraine’s flight” from it. And now that Ukraine has made it clear that it intends to continue that flight, Russia suffers from “a phantom pain” just as someone who has lost a leg or arm but continues to feel pain from something that is no longer there.
Russians are constantly trying to come up with something that will force Ukraine to turn back, but all of their ideas – be it giving passports to people in the Donbas or cutting off oil – only have the effect of reinforcing the desire of Ukraine’s to pursue their drive to separate themselves from Russia and join Europe.
Russians don’t understand this in large measure because there has arisen “a class of politicians and experts whose profession is to get angry about Ukraine.
These people evaluate Ukraine in terms of Russian realities and thus do not understand what is going on. They can’t imagine a country in which “someone can throw challenges at the leader and the leader will respond by arguing with him as an equal.” That is unthinkable in Russia and so Ukraine must be a failure because it isn’t Russia.
“Poroshenko’s defeat is described by Kremlin interpreters as a systemic failure,” Shevtsova says. They cannot understand that the exit of one leader and the entrance of another as a result of elections speaks to the vitality of the system: Ukrainians have won the right to choose leaders, they have the right to make errors and to correct them again through elections.”
Nonetheless, Ukraine works: its economy is growing and Europe will take it in.
Despite all its problems, Shevtsova says, “Europe understand that its security requires the incorporation of Ukraine and not leaving it in a dead zone as a failed state and source of tension with Russia.”
Russian experts want to convince everyone that Ukraine is on the world’s “periphery,” but “precisely this ‘periphery’ has called forth the confrontation of the West with Russia.” Ukraine has problems but it would be far more effective to help it solve them than try to exploit and exacerbate them to leave it ever more hostile at Russia.
“It is possible that more important than Zelenskyy will be the new balance of forces in the Rada and the new prime minister.” This is something Russians cannot understand, Shevtsova stresses.
One curious aspect of the situation in Ukraine is that Ukrainians are beginning to have more positive feelings toward Russia, but Russians do not understand why this is so. “It isn’t because Ukrainians have suddenly felt sympathy for Russia but because Russia has ceased to be the main problem for them.”
The Ukrainians “want to forget about us and think about their own worthy life. Without us!” Being rejected by someone is insulting, but “encountering indifference is still more offensive. But if Russia wants to return its dignity and vision of the future, it is going to have to get over Ukraine and occupy itself with its own affairs.”
Read More:
- Non-Russians inside Russia more important allies of West than is the opposition there, Verkhovna Rada leader says
- The EU’s “concentration camps” in Ukraine: A сase of proactive disinformation
- Putin’s plan for Ukraine
- Hybrid War in Ukraine – predictions for 2019 and beyond
- Russia’s creeping annexation of Belarus ‘already taking place,’ Juknevičienė says
- Putin, Zelensky, and the war in Ukraine
- West and Ukraine must learn lessons of Bush’s ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech, Podobed says
- Piontkovsky: To save his regime, Putin preparing to use nuclear weapons convinced West will blink first
- Secretly-prepared constitutional changes will open way to Anschluss of Belarus by Putin, Matskevich says
